Monday, August 31, 2009

Olallie Lake

David and I enjoyed a guy's night together at Olallie Lake this weekend, Camp Ten to be specific. David was in charge of the camera, so here's his top pictures: 



















Saturday, August 29, 2009

Weekly Report- Week One 2009-10



Ok,  So last year I took cute "First day of School" pictures of my kids.  So adorable!  This year I didn't take a single picture all week.  Lame, I know.  My only excuse is that the weeks leading up to the start of school were quite the upheaval but I am not going to get into that craziness.

So we started year six of homeschooling and I have to say that this was the first year I was not looking forward to school.  Once we got started I was pleasantly surprised to find the routine of school relaxing and it occurred to me that I actually do enjoy teaching.  Yep, I get a kick out of explaining that prepositional phrases can act as adjectives and then demonstrating how to diagram those prepositional phrases. 

 If that hasn't convinced you that I am nuts then let me tell you about Latin.

I picked up a copy of Ecce Romani used, for a steal.  It was my one curriculum impulse-buy of the season.  It uses an immersion method of teaching Latin which means instead of chanting endings and memorizing vocabulary they throw you a paragraph in Latin and tell you to read (with some of the vocabulary defined at the bottom of the page).  This has been a ton of fun, even David likes it!  ER is a full Latin program but we are just using the reading text to supplement our Lively Latin.

We made it through the first week and we managed to fit everything in.  We will need to tweak things a little over time but I think it will be a good year.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

San Juan Island

My friend Jeremy and I took our annual guy's trip last week, this time to the San Juan Islands. What an awesome trip in a beautiful part of the world!

Orcas Island -









Roche Harbor -

From the ferry deck -







A lonely sailboat - seen from the peak of Mount Pickett, Orcas Island -


After kayaking a few miles out to an uninhabited island we "captured" it for the day and enjoyed some spectacular views from "our" island - 


Ferrry through heatwaves (Click to enlarge) -





















We found this little USGS survey marker on the island, set in place in 1939 -

Coming back into Anacortes, after passing through the thin but dense fog bank - 

Paper mill against Olympic Mountains - From the ferry coming into Port Townsend - 




Wooden boat, Port Townsend - 

So, I picked the cucumbers today


and then grabbed just a few sprigs of basil.  Pesto anyone?
(I have no idea what I am going to do with all of this.)